Bush, Putin agree on Iran

U.S. OKs compromise on uranium enrichment

November 19, 2005|By David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, New York Times News Service

PUSAN, South Korea — Presenting a united front against Iran, President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia agreed to press Iran to reverse itself and accept a compromise allowing it to enrich uranium, but only in Russia under strict controls.

The plan would let Iran enrich uranium only to levels suitable for use in nuclear reactors, using Russian technology. "We hope that over time Iran will see the virtue of this approach, and it may provide a way out," Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters here Friday, after the two leaders met.

Bush and Putin are in South Korea attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, along with other leaders from across the region.

Separately, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a new report about Iran to its board Friday showing that Iran was offered information in 1987 that could have helped it cast uranium into the precise shapes needed to build the core of a nuclear bomb.

The engineering drawings were offered by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani who headed what was the world's largest nuclear black market, but Iran said it never sought the information and did not accept the offer. It has previously acknowledged buying centrifuges from the Khan network but said it used them to enrich uranium for commercial power reactors, not atomic bombs.

While the report made no reference to weaponry, it indicated the Khan network offered to help Iran shape uranium metal into "hemispherical forms," which arms experts said suggested the making of bomb cores.

"The Russians are getting very, very frustrated with the refusal of the Iranians to move to a middle ground," one senior U.S. official said. A senior Russian delegation that went to Tehran last week was unable to persuade the Iranians to consider giving up enriching uranium on their soil, U.S. officials said.

Under the nuclear plan proposed by Russia and endorsed by Britain, France and Germany -- which are leading the talks with Iran -- Tehran would be permitted to continue to convert raw uranium into a gas form, called uranium hexafluoride. That gas can be enriched if processed by high-speed centrifuges, which made up most of the technology Khan's network sold Iran in 1987 and in deals that resumed in 1994.

Under the new plan, Iran would no longer be able to enrich uranium on its soil. The Iranian government has said it will never give up its right to enrich, under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Hadley, in describing the proposed compromise in public for the first time Friday, said Iran, "while retaining its right to enrichment and reprocessing, would, nonetheless, find it in its interest to give up that right in terms of its own territory."

An enrichment plant would be built in Russia "in which Iran would have management and financial interest but not a technical interest," he added. Iran would have no control over the level to which the uranium is enriched, preventing it from making bomb fuel.